The Last Dark: The climax of the entire Thomas Covenant Chronicles (Last Chronicles of Thomas Cove)

failing.
    Still his given body remembered its own exigencies, its own compulsory striving. It locked itself against the impulse to inhale death—
    —until the lurker suddenly ripped him upward.
    He knew nothing; remembered nothing; could not interpret his changed rush through the fluid dark. But the flesh which Linden had fashioned for him was ruled by strictures that did not require conscious choices. As the tentacle heaved him out of the water and thrust him high, the pressure in his chest seemed to explode. Bursting, he found air.
    For a time, nothing existed except wretched gasping and life. Blots like devoured stars swam across the void inside his eyelids, inside his head. Air and the wind of his blind movement exacerbated the sting of the waters until it felt feral, as fierce as wasps. Every breath was tumid and rank, difficult to take. The night tortured him with questions for which there were no answers.
    Try to believe that you are pure.
    Because he had to see, he slitted a glimpse outward and found ruptured dazzles there as well.
    His eyes bled tears. Light smeared his vision. The shining was a noxious silver like and unlike the alloyed clarity of wild magic. And it was tainted by an underhue of emerald that resembled the virulence of the Illearth Stone. He did not understand it. The tentacle jerked him from side to side, asking its own febrile questions. The Sarangrave’s fouled waters clung to his skin like scales. He felt blisters bubbling everywhere.
    But tears washed away bitter minerals and evil. Blinking rapidly, he began to see.
    Below him stretched a pool the size of a small lake. It veered one way and another as the tentacle squirmed. Its surface blazed with a nacreous lucence as dangerous as necrosis.
    From the depths of the water rose two more tentacles. They were thick as towers, supple as serpents, mighty as siege-engines. And they were locked in battle. One struck at the other while the other writhed to avoid blows that would have toppled oaks. The ferocity of their movement churned the pool to froth. Their struggle cast shadows like screams across the wetland, but did not quench the light.
    The attacking arm feinted to distract the other. An instant later, the attacker flung itself like a noose around its foe near the water-line. It tightened and strained, apparently trying to rip the other arm in half.
    At first, Covenant did not recognize what was happening. Then he did. The lurker seemed to be fighting itself, but it was not. It was resisting the Raver. Covenant felt
turiya
’s loud malevolence in the caught tentacle. The Raver’s mastery of the monster had reached this far along one arm. Now Horrim Carabal strove to tear off the possessed part of itself before
turiya
could claim more.
    A doomed struggle: the lurker could not clench tightly enough, dismember itself swiftly enough. And it could not make the Raver flinch or shy because the Raver was not afraid. Moments after the monster grabbed its own arm, Covenant saw
turiya
Herem’s evil slip past the constriction and spread farther.
    The lurker released that arm, tried for a new grip. What else could the monster do? But it could not preserve itself by that means. The truth was plain. The Raver’s viciousness moved too easily. Even if the lurker contrived to stop
turiya
in one place, Lord Foul’s servant would simply shift his possession to another tentacle.
    A timid shriek thronged into the dark sky. Around the pool were gathered the lurker’s worshippers, hundreds of them. Some stood to their waists in the water: others crowded the verge. From all of their hands shone green fires, bright desperation. Their wailing was a ululation of terror. But their hands and flames moved in unison, dropping low and then rising high as one, swaying from side to side like an invocation.
    In the distance behind them crouched tormented growth and lurid streams, helpless in spite of innumerable toxins. Beyond the light lay beleaguered darkness.
    The Feroce were trying to save their High God. Surely that was what they were doing? But Covenant had no idea what they sought to accomplish.
    Then he understood.
    Two nights ago, in his cave above the Sunbirth Sea, the lurker’s creatures had given him unexpected aid. Wielding their peculiar theurgy, they had caused the Harrow’s prostrate destrier to recover its captious nature.
We have not given it strength
.
We cannot
.
But we have caused it to remember what it is
. That gift had enabled the beast